Couchbase vs Riak

• Couchbase performance is exceptional both for in-memory and persisted transactions.
• Handling of node failures and cluster rebalancing (high availability).
• Enterprise support from Couchbase themselves
• Good documentation
• Streaming of bucket (database) level mutations via their Database Change Protocol (DCP).
• Replication of datasets between native clients and Couchbase buckets
• Handling of simultaneous writes to the same record with performance penalties

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• Riak is great at handling large volumes of requests. We've seen Riak perform well under large volume while keeping response times quite low.
• Riak is also fast providing consistent sub 10ms reads in both the datacenter and cloud.
• Flexible allowing storage of numerous data types. We heavily leverage this to store various JSON documents in a single bucket.
• We really like the RESTful interface that is provided. Makes the learning curve almost invisible and provides a quick speed to market in using Riak.

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• The N1QL engine performs poorly compared to SQL engines due to the number of interactions needed, so if your use case involves the need for a lot of SQL-like query activity as opposed to the direct fetch of data in the form of a key/value map you may want to consider a RDBMS that has support for json data types so that you can more easily mix the use of relational and non-relational approaches to data access.
• You have to be careful when using multiple capabilities (e.g. transactions with Sync Gateway) as you will typically run into problems where one technology may not operate correctly in combination with another.
• There are quality problems with some newly released features, so be careful with being an early adopter unless you really need the capability. We somewhat desperately adopted the use of transactions, but went through multiple bughunt cycles with Couchbase working the kinks out.

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• It does not have any native startup scripts in Linux.
• Since it's built on Erlang, its a bit difficult to administer.

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• Great performance.
• Leading Couchbase Lite capabilities for mobile use.
• Developers' learning curve with replica reads and multi cluster can be long. Needs guidance and nurturing.
• Cluster maintenance during OS patching, etc. has multiple ways to approach. Operational teams may need some guidance.

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• Riak has been a key part of our company's build process for our client's search backend. It is valuable for is in that it provides a reliable way to view the current search index.

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